Before I start posting on this blog in earnest, I thought I had better set out how it came about.
Since September 2006, that’s approaching almost three years ago, I have been writing my Process Guy blog. I used it to write mainly about politics, especially the internal affairs of the Liberal Democrats, and in a random way about other things that interested me or I felt strongly about. I did not have any great purpose for the blog other than to develop my writing skills and learn about the process of blogging.
This I feel I have achieved. So much so that I began to have wider ambitions for the blog. I began to want to see if I could use it to start influencing opinions. The main focus for this was again the internal affairs of the Liberal Democrats. However, my attempts to do this led to me feeling restricted by the format of my old blog. This was partly the technical limitiations of the Blogger platform, but also the style of the blog that I had adopted, and in particular the name. While I knew what I meant by “Process Guy”, I’m not sure anyone else did! In fact, it may have put some people off.
I admit that any lack of success with my blogging can be attributed more to my inability to post frequently than anything else. It has to be said that the frequency of my posts was somewhat erratic. However, I felt a new approach was needed.
At the same time I was becoming more conscious that I was failing to get the most out of my various online presences. I believe that having a strong online identity will be important for me in achieving those things I want to achieve both in politics and professionally. I am not sure my old blog, the small website (more a holding page) that used to be at this URL, and the other places that stuff about me can be found online were really doing me justice.
So it was becoming clear that it was time for a change.
I have to give credit where it is due and say that the catalyst for finally deciding to get on and make that change, the motivating spark for setting up this website in it’s current form, came from Lib Dem online guru Mark Pack. When he launched his current blog I was impressed by what he had done. By combining his different online outputs and consolidating his various writing in one place he has created a very strong online home.
While what I do online is rather modest when compared to Mark, I was inspired to go away and come up with a completely fresh approach that would fit with what I want to do. So I shut up shop at the old blog, spent some weeks doing some head scratching, and then spent more weeks playing around with WordPress template code, and this is the result.
I hope you like it.